User:William P. Coleman/Sandbox

If you're thinking of creating a new robotics article or of significantly expanding an existing stub, there is a pathway that will bring the most effectiveness and the most attention—to you, to the article, and to robotics as a field. This path goes from WP:DYK, to WP:GA, to WP:FA. The purpose of this section is to explain how the process works. Some roboticists will be interested in increasing their Wikipedia skills and learning the process themselves. Other roboticists may prefer to stick to the robotics topics they know best and not involve themselves in Wikipedia minutiae; help is available for them from copyeditors who will try make their drafts palatable to Wikipedia.

• WP:DYK. The Wikipedia Main Page has a section called "Did you know..." that tries to entice readers to explore, by feeding them brief, interesting facts from new or newly revised articles. The rules are at WP:DYK and you can try to get your work listed by applying at T:DYK.

You can read the full rules for yourself, but the main ones are:

• the article cited must have a minimum length of 1500 characters and either

• be created within 5 days of listing, or
• have had its main text (not references, etc.) expanded to 5 times its previous word count within the last 5 days; and

• the fact to be listed must appear clearly in the article and be supported by a citation.

The 5-day requirement counts from the time that creation/expansion begins and runs until the time of actual listing (including negotiation with the WP:DYK editors) and therefore means that it's best to do your work on a subpage of your user page (more about this below).

If you follow the rules, your chance of success is good, and if you do succeed the WP:DYN people will place a certificate on your talk page and on the article talk page, and you will be entitled to place a merit badge on your user page. You will have established a basic level of accomplishment that helps you get further with the article.

However, if you're thinking of contributing to or expanding an existing article, then you should be aware that the WP:DYK editors, although otherwise friendly and helpful, are careful in enforcing the 5x expansion criterion and it can be hard to meet if the existing article is already somewhat long. Therefore, if you feel it appropriate, please feel free to skip the WP:DYK step, which is completely optional.

• WP:GA. Good articles should meet the good article criteria and have passed through the good article nomination process successfully. In short, they should be well written, factually accurate and verifiable, broad in coverage, neutral in point of view, stable, and illustrated, where possible, by relevant images with suitable copyright licenses. "Good article" represents a high level of achievement.

• If you don't want to try for this, there is no reason to. There are other possible grades. It's enormously helpful if you do enough work to raise an article by a single grade or if you start an article by creating a stub.
• However, if you would like to try for this, then "be bold." If you are willing to work (very!) hard and if you start with enough reference material, you can do it. You can get help from copyeditors (see below).

• WP:FA. "Featured article" represents the highest level of article quality. It's a long process, best attempted in stages.

• The absolutely most important criterion in selecting an article to work on is that you personally feel it's important and interesting—and can justify its notability.
• If there are several such topics that interest you, then the next most important criterion is to pick the one for which you have the most reference material. (Researching it will likely also uncover references you can use in other articles.)
• Create a subpage of your user page in which to do your work.

• Be sure to put this page on your watchlist.
• If it's a new article (check to make sure) then give it an appropriate title.
• If you're expanding an existing stub, then give it the same title as the stub.
• Call it "User:yourname/myarticletitle."

• The very first thing to fill in is the reference section. This may seem bureaucratic, but in fact it will help you and your copyeditor organize your material better and it will make the writing process smoother.
• If you want help then ask one or more copyeditors (see list below) by leaving a message on their user talk page.

• Give them a link to the user subpage where you're working.
• Give them an indication how intrusive you'd like them to be. You may prefer that they not directly edit your working page, but just leave suggestions on the talk page. Or, you might prefer that they just go in and rewrite, restructure, and do what needs to be done. Or, you might want something in between these extremes. The key is to let them know.
• In any case, they may leave messages for you on the article's talk page, which they may create if necessary.
• Remember that, in any case, the copyeditor is only constructively trying to help. He or she isn't a teacher and isn't grading you. They aren't criticizing you -- just giving whatever degree of help you ask for.
• Depending on how many copyeditors sign up and on how many users ask for help, a significant backlog may develop, so please be patient!

• When you've got the article "finished," at least for the time being, then move it out of your user space and into the main space. Apply for WP:DYK, if appropriate. List it here, so that other members of WP:ROBO know about it and can try to help.

Please add your signature (William P. Coleman (talk) 22:52, 8 February 2008 (UTC)) if you are willing to do the duties described in the main section (in alphabetical order):

• William P. Coleman (talk) 22:52, 8 February 2008 (UTC)